Now I am like most PS3 gamers. We want to get more money out of our machine before the next cycle arrives. But looking at the line up this year, I just can't help thinking that a large majority of the big developers have released a game this year which has got to hint at something
The PS3 has enjoyed some wonderful exclusives this year. From Killzone and LBP2 all the way to Resistance and Uncharted 3. It is not really the amount that, to me, hints at a PS4's announcement on the horizon but it is the high quality studios themselves who have released/releasing a game this year. So Media Molecule, Guerrilla Games, Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Zipper Interactive, Evolution Studios and more have released/going to release a game this year. That is a lot of major Sony studios
Sony exclusives do sell well. But to release a game pretty much every month or two seems, to me, a bad business plan. Everyone has preference over which exclusive to like but with the situation this year the amount means that not all of us can afford to get every exclusive. I have found it more difficult this year than I have in the past. But you may ask what has this go to do with the PS4
Well it feels that this year is the last hurrah for the PS3. The biggest studios have come/about to come out with big games. These developers usually spend around two to three years developing a game. It may seem plausible to you that in two to three years they will come out with more games for the PS3 but I am not getting that feeling. Media Molecule have already stated they are now looking beyond LittleBigPlanet. The studio director told Edge that they are "stepping away from LittleBigPlanet to focus on some new ideas." A tweet was shortly followed on the media molecule twitter feed which read "Loyal sackfolk - please be reassured that we will always be involved with LBP, at least a bit, and there's lots more fun yet to come! <3".The words "at least a bit" caught my eye. At the moment Media molecule are basically following up some ideas.
A lot may be thinking this might have something to do with narrowing the PS3 and 360 gap. I believe that is true but there could be another motive for this. The amount of games and the price cut shows it has been a busy year for the PS3. I am getting the impression this is the last chance to entice more people to buy a PS3 to increase sales before the PS4 is announced.
I conclude with this open thought to you. Why would Sony release all its major games and unveil a price drop this year? We have had some games announced for 2012 but not many major ones. Could we see a PS4 announcement at E3 2012. I kind of hope not as it means buying a new console but Sony are defiantly indirectly hinting at a new console. Why bunch up all the exclusives into one year if this wasn't so? I would love to know your (N4G users) opinion.
Thứ Sáu, 14 tháng 10, 2011
Nick Jr., MTVN expand in Asia
Rugrats and music fans in Singapore and Malaysia will be able to tune in to “Dora the Explorer” and 24-hour music videos, docus and concerts with the launch of Viacom’s Nick Jr. and MTVN HD in the territories in coming weeks.
Nick Jr Games. will bow on Singapore’s Starhub from May 18, while MTVN HD will air on Telekom Malaysia Berhad’s HyppTV in Malaysia from June 1.
Nick Jr. will be available on the StarHub TV’s Kids Basic Upsize Group, while MTVNHD will be available to existing StarHub TV’s Entertainment Basic Group customers who are subscribed to the Basic HD Upsize group.
TM will offer the two channels a la carte to its subscribers on HyppTV, Malaysia’s newest pay TV service.
The services will roll out to the rest of the region at a date to be announced.
Nick Jr Games. will bow on Singapore’s Starhub from May 18, while MTVN HD will air on Telekom Malaysia Berhad’s HyppTV in Malaysia from June 1.
Nick Jr. will be available on the StarHub TV’s Kids Basic Upsize Group, while MTVNHD will be available to existing StarHub TV’s Entertainment Basic Group customers who are subscribed to the Basic HD Upsize group.
TM will offer the two channels a la carte to its subscribers on HyppTV, Malaysia’s newest pay TV service.
The services will roll out to the rest of the region at a date to be announced.
Official Pokemon Game Coming To Smartphones
The Pokemon Company is set to bring an official Pokemon Online game to smartphone devices, marking the first time that an official Nintendo-copyrighted app will be available on the iOS and Android.
Called Pokemon Iie Tap (rougly Pokemon: Say Tap?), the app appears to be a rhythm game where players “tap on Pokemon indigo trading cards to the beat of a song from the anime,” according to a translation by consumer video game site GamesRadar.
According to the game’s official announcement, it will be available for most iOS devices, as well as Android devices running version 2.1 of the platform.
Though this is the first iOS or Android application to carry an official Nintendo copyright, it is not the first mobile app of any kind: a Pokemon mobile phone game called Pokemate was released in Japan in 2006.
Though it is a rarity, Nintendo does have a history of releasing official games on platforms that are not its own, including a promotional Flash game to promote its Tingle character.
A release outside of Japan has not been announced.
Called Pokemon Iie Tap (rougly Pokemon: Say Tap?), the app appears to be a rhythm game where players “tap on Pokemon indigo trading cards to the beat of a song from the anime,” according to a translation by consumer video game site GamesRadar.
According to the game’s official announcement, it will be available for most iOS devices, as well as Android devices running version 2.1 of the platform.
Though this is the first iOS or Android application to carry an official Nintendo copyright, it is not the first mobile app of any kind: a Pokemon mobile phone game called Pokemate was released in Japan in 2006.
Though it is a rarity, Nintendo does have a history of releasing official games on platforms that are not its own, including a promotional Flash game to promote its Tingle character.
A release outside of Japan has not been announced.
Thứ Ba, 11 tháng 10, 2011
DeNA gobbles up Chilean Little Cave Hero maker Atakama Labs
The Little Cave Hero just moved on to a much bigger cave. VentureBeat reports that DeNA has acquired Chilean social game developer Atakama Labs for an undisclosed amount, though the website recalls that the price might be around $6 million. Atakama Labs is best known for quirky Facebook games like Little Cave Hero and artsy iPhone games like Today I Die Again.
It appears that this acquisition was made with specific interest in Atakama, founded by Esteban Sosnik and Tiburcio de la Carcova after fleeing to Santiago, Chile in search of political and economic stability, helping DeNA's mobile efforts. Namely, Atakama Labs will work with DeNA-owned Ngmoco to support the Mobage mobile social game network.
The mobile scene will likely be the next major battlefield for social game creators, especially as social game developers and publishers focus more and more resources on creating the next top 10 app. Most recently, Zynga revealed that it's working on another mobile version of Mafia Wars after shuttering its existing HTML5 endeavor. This question remains, however: Will it be quality games or robust networks that will decide who wins the mobile social gaming wars?
Do you think this was a wise move on DeNA's part to acquire Atakama Labs? What types of games do you hope to see from Atakama now that it's with the Mobage network? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment
It appears that this acquisition was made with specific interest in Atakama, founded by Esteban Sosnik and Tiburcio de la Carcova after fleeing to Santiago, Chile in search of political and economic stability, helping DeNA's mobile efforts. Namely, Atakama Labs will work with DeNA-owned Ngmoco to support the Mobage mobile social game network.
The mobile scene will likely be the next major battlefield for social game creators, especially as social game developers and publishers focus more and more resources on creating the next top 10 app. Most recently, Zynga revealed that it's working on another mobile version of Mafia Wars after shuttering its existing HTML5 endeavor. This question remains, however: Will it be quality games or robust networks that will decide who wins the mobile social gaming wars?
Do you think this was a wise move on DeNA's part to acquire Atakama Labs? What types of games do you hope to see from Atakama now that it's with the Mobage network? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment
Kabam on Edgeworld's release and what battles lie ahead [Interview]
Edgeworld
Even at first glance of its war-torn landscape filled with futuristic buildings blasted to bits by the laser weapons of alien and mechanized armies, it's clear that Edgeworld is San Francisco-based developer Kabam's most ambitious project yet. Formerly known as Watercooler, the studio and publisher is filled with fans of traditional strategy PC games. Even CEO Kevin Chou was a world-ranked StarCraft player back in the day.
Inspired by sci-fi staples like Star Wars, Star Trek and even the Halo series of shooter games, Edgeworld is the culmination of Kabam's ongoing mission to bring a true 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) game experience to Facebook. Since the game's "open beta" release in August, the team is hard at work to make that vision a reality as it claims to have in previous games. (As of this writing, the game enjoys over 858,000 monthly players, according to AppData.)
We sat down with Edgeworld Producer James Holloway recently to hear his thoughts on the game post-release, and what plans he and the rest of the Kabam team have for the strategy game in the future.
Edgeworld in action
Now that Edgeworld has released, what are your knee-jerk reactions? What do you love about the game at release, and what would you like to fix most?
We're really pleased with the release so far. We're seeing a lot of people come back to play the game--it has a really high retention. A lot of people are joining Alliances and engaging with each other. In every sector, I see chat is very active. But this is just the beginning.
The biggest thing that I think we're missing is that our Alliance feature is pretty lean right now. The thing that we would like to emphasize more is a cooperative play of the game. I think we have just the basics right now. The new Maps feature is going to integrate very tightly with alliances--you work together [with Alliances] to conquer territory.
We have about four unique turrets and nine units, and that's just the beginning. We're working on a new unit and a new turret that we're really excited about, and those are going to launch in the next month. We'll be introducing higher levels of our buildings. So, there's a lot more content that we need to create, and we're just getting started.
What's the most interesting thing you've seen players do in the game since release--something that never happened during testing?
One thing that we sort of didn't anticipate was that some Alliances and players are attacking each other for resources. At one point we didn't have inter-Alliance resource sharing, so right now you can actually send resources to other players to help them out. So, we didn't have that feature [originally].
But what people were doing was working around that by setting up their Command Centers, which are what contain your resources, outside the perimeter of their turrets. [Players would then] leave their Alliance, cook it, and then attack them and take their resources. So, they were doing resource transfers before the feature was even allowed.
Do you have any interesting or helpful gameplay tips for the players to get ahead in Edgeworld?
Certainly! If you're just starting out, we give every player two days of starter protection wherein no other player can attack you. That's a free few days of protection, and use that time wisely to build up your base and experiment with different configurations. Allow the Factions to attack your base. There's a lot of experimentation with the units.
Players are posting on the forums, talking with each other and also within their Alliances about the best combinations of units to deploy when attacking a base. There are a lot of combinations of tanks and DPS [damage per second] units you can deploy. Rhinos, or other types that have a lot of hit points, can take a lot of fire, and then you can deploy units with longer range or higher DPS behind them.
Edgeworld blast
Depending on what your goals are--like, you might want as many resources as possible--you might want to deploy the Raiders. The Rhinos draw fire from the turrets, while the Spectres sit outside and fire away at the turrets. You really want to upgrade your Spectres to give them a longer range.
We have two different types of units in the game right now: infantry units and mechanized units. It's not necessarily that the mechs are more powerful than the infantry--we're still constantly balancing the game to make sure every unit has its role.
Another thing is that the Warp Gates are really important as far as attacking goes. As you upgrade those, you increase their capacity so that you can actually deploy more units on the ground [at once]. As you unlock more units, the more powerful units will start to consume more of the [Warp Gates'] bandwidth, so you want to upgrade those to deploy the biggest army that you can.
Thanks for talking with us (and for the tips), James.
Territories Could Blow Alliance Play Wide Open
During our chat, Holloway had something brand new to show coming soon to Edgeworld. (Though, it's still in the concept phase, so weren't provided images.) It's a feature tentatively known as "Territories," and the game's producer hopes that it will expand Alliance play into something even more meaningful.
"We haven't seen a past feature like this that I can think of, and we all play a lot of games," Holloway gushes about what he's about to show me. "We're trying to make this a deeper, more robust 4X or empires building game."
As it relates to the game's story, many of the Galactic Union's outposts have been abandoned during the war for Cerulea IV, and they're ripe for the taking. The Territories feature will provide you with a map of the entire planet Cerulea IV, with your home base appearing in the center as a star. Your home base will be surrounded by either hostile, Alliance or neutral territories marked in red, green or simply displayed as abandoned outposts, respectively.
Edgeworld concept art
It's up to you to work with your Alliance to invade either hostile (controlled by enemy Alliances) or neutral outposts, and keep them under your control for as long as possible to reap their benefits, which weren't revealed to us. (Our best guess is additional resources to keep your home bases going.) Players will individually attack outposts just as they would enemy bases, and can call on their Alliance for help asynchronously.
However, players cannot build on these outposts, only bolster their existing defense turrets with their own resources to maintain control of the benefits they provide. This will make it more difficult for enemies to invade. Speaking of invading, players can only enter outposts that are adjacent to their own base or controlled outposts. Eventually, we see the Territories feature becoming a constant struggle between opposing Alliances, and hopefully something for us to work toward.
"This is very different from our other strategy games," Holloway says. "In most cases you individually own tiles on the map, but in this case you kind of need an Alliance to own territory. This is something we're really excited about. We're still working on it and prototyping it, but hopefully we'll have something out in the next four weeks."
[Image Credit: Kabam]
What are you impressions of Edgeworld so far? Are you excited about the upcoming Territories feature coming to the game, and what else do you hope to see from developers like Kabam? Sound off in the comments. 4 Comments
Even at first glance of its war-torn landscape filled with futuristic buildings blasted to bits by the laser weapons of alien and mechanized armies, it's clear that Edgeworld is San Francisco-based developer Kabam's most ambitious project yet. Formerly known as Watercooler, the studio and publisher is filled with fans of traditional strategy PC games. Even CEO Kevin Chou was a world-ranked StarCraft player back in the day.
Inspired by sci-fi staples like Star Wars, Star Trek and even the Halo series of shooter games, Edgeworld is the culmination of Kabam's ongoing mission to bring a true 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) game experience to Facebook. Since the game's "open beta" release in August, the team is hard at work to make that vision a reality as it claims to have in previous games. (As of this writing, the game enjoys over 858,000 monthly players, according to AppData.)
We sat down with Edgeworld Producer James Holloway recently to hear his thoughts on the game post-release, and what plans he and the rest of the Kabam team have for the strategy game in the future.
Edgeworld in action
Now that Edgeworld has released, what are your knee-jerk reactions? What do you love about the game at release, and what would you like to fix most?
We're really pleased with the release so far. We're seeing a lot of people come back to play the game--it has a really high retention. A lot of people are joining Alliances and engaging with each other. In every sector, I see chat is very active. But this is just the beginning.
The biggest thing that I think we're missing is that our Alliance feature is pretty lean right now. The thing that we would like to emphasize more is a cooperative play of the game. I think we have just the basics right now. The new Maps feature is going to integrate very tightly with alliances--you work together [with Alliances] to conquer territory.
We have about four unique turrets and nine units, and that's just the beginning. We're working on a new unit and a new turret that we're really excited about, and those are going to launch in the next month. We'll be introducing higher levels of our buildings. So, there's a lot more content that we need to create, and we're just getting started.
What's the most interesting thing you've seen players do in the game since release--something that never happened during testing?
One thing that we sort of didn't anticipate was that some Alliances and players are attacking each other for resources. At one point we didn't have inter-Alliance resource sharing, so right now you can actually send resources to other players to help them out. So, we didn't have that feature [originally].
But what people were doing was working around that by setting up their Command Centers, which are what contain your resources, outside the perimeter of their turrets. [Players would then] leave their Alliance, cook it, and then attack them and take their resources. So, they were doing resource transfers before the feature was even allowed.
Do you have any interesting or helpful gameplay tips for the players to get ahead in Edgeworld?
Certainly! If you're just starting out, we give every player two days of starter protection wherein no other player can attack you. That's a free few days of protection, and use that time wisely to build up your base and experiment with different configurations. Allow the Factions to attack your base. There's a lot of experimentation with the units.
Players are posting on the forums, talking with each other and also within their Alliances about the best combinations of units to deploy when attacking a base. There are a lot of combinations of tanks and DPS [damage per second] units you can deploy. Rhinos, or other types that have a lot of hit points, can take a lot of fire, and then you can deploy units with longer range or higher DPS behind them.
Edgeworld blast
Depending on what your goals are--like, you might want as many resources as possible--you might want to deploy the Raiders. The Rhinos draw fire from the turrets, while the Spectres sit outside and fire away at the turrets. You really want to upgrade your Spectres to give them a longer range.
We have two different types of units in the game right now: infantry units and mechanized units. It's not necessarily that the mechs are more powerful than the infantry--we're still constantly balancing the game to make sure every unit has its role.
Another thing is that the Warp Gates are really important as far as attacking goes. As you upgrade those, you increase their capacity so that you can actually deploy more units on the ground [at once]. As you unlock more units, the more powerful units will start to consume more of the [Warp Gates'] bandwidth, so you want to upgrade those to deploy the biggest army that you can.
Thanks for talking with us (and for the tips), James.
Territories Could Blow Alliance Play Wide Open
During our chat, Holloway had something brand new to show coming soon to Edgeworld. (Though, it's still in the concept phase, so weren't provided images.) It's a feature tentatively known as "Territories," and the game's producer hopes that it will expand Alliance play into something even more meaningful.
"We haven't seen a past feature like this that I can think of, and we all play a lot of games," Holloway gushes about what he's about to show me. "We're trying to make this a deeper, more robust 4X or empires building game."
As it relates to the game's story, many of the Galactic Union's outposts have been abandoned during the war for Cerulea IV, and they're ripe for the taking. The Territories feature will provide you with a map of the entire planet Cerulea IV, with your home base appearing in the center as a star. Your home base will be surrounded by either hostile, Alliance or neutral territories marked in red, green or simply displayed as abandoned outposts, respectively.
Edgeworld concept art
It's up to you to work with your Alliance to invade either hostile (controlled by enemy Alliances) or neutral outposts, and keep them under your control for as long as possible to reap their benefits, which weren't revealed to us. (Our best guess is additional resources to keep your home bases going.) Players will individually attack outposts just as they would enemy bases, and can call on their Alliance for help asynchronously.
However, players cannot build on these outposts, only bolster their existing defense turrets with their own resources to maintain control of the benefits they provide. This will make it more difficult for enemies to invade. Speaking of invading, players can only enter outposts that are adjacent to their own base or controlled outposts. Eventually, we see the Territories feature becoming a constant struggle between opposing Alliances, and hopefully something for us to work toward.
"This is very different from our other strategy games," Holloway says. "In most cases you individually own tiles on the map, but in this case you kind of need an Alliance to own territory. This is something we're really excited about. We're still working on it and prototyping it, but hopefully we'll have something out in the next four weeks."
[Image Credit: Kabam]
What are you impressions of Edgeworld so far? Are you excited about the upcoming Territories feature coming to the game, and what else do you hope to see from developers like Kabam? Sound off in the comments. 4 Comments
Thứ Tư, 5 tháng 10, 2011
Cafe World Signature Dish feature coming soon [Video]
While sometimes it may seem like Cafe World is more about asking your friends for items than actually cooking, a new feature will soon be launching in the game called "Signature Dish," which will apparently put a focus back on cooking. To put it simply, this feature will allow you to combine various ingredients to create your own dishes. These dishes can then be cooked and mastered in your cafe.
Along with this new feature will come a seven-part goal series which will see us building something called the "DishMaster." This DishMaster will give us access to a Taste Lab where we'll be able to combine our ingredients. Each dish starts out with Base Ingredients, and can then be spruced up using meats, herbs, spices or even side dishes. Two base ingredients, for example, may be Spaghetti or White Rice.
Once this feature launches, a new "Taste Lab" section will be available in you cookbook. It looks like we'll be able to create just four signature dishes to start, with additional recipe slots being unlocked with Cafe Cash. When creating dishes, we'll use one of each ingredient to create it, with ingredients coming from another new feature: Farmer Fred's Ingredient Marketplace. Some ingredients go for Cafe Cash, while others cost varying amount of coins. Each particular ingredient updates the stats of your dish; that is, if you use Beef in your recipe, it will automatically gain six hours of cooking time, while Pork adds just four hours. Each ingredient also adds different amount of Cafe Points and Servings to your final product.
Again, this Signature Dish feature is still listed as "coming soon," but it does give those players who like mastering dishes something to be very excited about. We'll make sure to bring you a complete look at these DishMaster goals and the Signature Dish feature when it fully launches in the game, but for now, check out the trailer below for more of a sneak peek.
Are you excited about the upcoming Signature Dish feature in Cafe World, or does it add an extra layer of complexity to the game that it doesn't need? Sound off in the comments.
Along with this new feature will come a seven-part goal series which will see us building something called the "DishMaster." This DishMaster will give us access to a Taste Lab where we'll be able to combine our ingredients. Each dish starts out with Base Ingredients, and can then be spruced up using meats, herbs, spices or even side dishes. Two base ingredients, for example, may be Spaghetti or White Rice.
Once this feature launches, a new "Taste Lab" section will be available in you cookbook. It looks like we'll be able to create just four signature dishes to start, with additional recipe slots being unlocked with Cafe Cash. When creating dishes, we'll use one of each ingredient to create it, with ingredients coming from another new feature: Farmer Fred's Ingredient Marketplace. Some ingredients go for Cafe Cash, while others cost varying amount of coins. Each particular ingredient updates the stats of your dish; that is, if you use Beef in your recipe, it will automatically gain six hours of cooking time, while Pork adds just four hours. Each ingredient also adds different amount of Cafe Points and Servings to your final product.
Again, this Signature Dish feature is still listed as "coming soon," but it does give those players who like mastering dishes something to be very excited about. We'll make sure to bring you a complete look at these DishMaster goals and the Signature Dish feature when it fully launches in the game, but for now, check out the trailer below for more of a sneak peek.
Are you excited about the upcoming Signature Dish feature in Cafe World, or does it add an extra layer of complexity to the game that it doesn't need? Sound off in the comments.
Zynga Gamestop promotion now live in Cafe World, CityVille, Pioneer Trail and more [UPDATE]
Last night, we brought you a complete rundown of the new GameStop promotion taking place in FarmVille, that will reward users with 1, 3 or 6 mystery goods in the game for redeeming one of the three dollar values of Zynga Game Cards that have been purchased at GameStop. Now, though, the promotion becomes much more interesting (and perhaps more dangerous to your pocketbook), as a similar deal has gone live in Cafe World, Mafia Wars, YoVille, CityVille, the Pioneer Trail and Empires & Allies! Holy cow!
To be specific, each game has its own set of items, some of which are exclusive to this GameStop promotion. If you purchase a $10 Game Card, you're guaranteed to receive just a single Mystery Good, although which item on the list you'll receive looks to truly be a mystery. For $25, your prize goes up to three Mystery Goods, while the top dollar amount - $50 - grants you six prizes. Keep in mind, you'll also receive the appropriate amount of premium currency for the particular game you've redeemed the card in.
Here's a complete look at the items that are available (notice that some are re-releases, or are least far less valuable than others - Cafe World spice, I'm looking at you).
Interestingly, Adventure World isn't found in this promotion, but that's likely due to its still young age. You'll only have until November 6 to take advantage of this offer, but in that time you can purchase as many cards (or as few) as you'd like. Perhaps we'll see Adventure World items added in that time frame, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that possibility just to be safe. For more information, check out the promotion's website.
UPDATE: We've spoken with Zynga, which confirms that Adventure World players won't be left out in the cold. If you're a PowerUp Rewards member (GameStop's rewards program), you'll receive an additional code for a starter pack in Adventure World or the upcoming Mafia Wars 2.
Will you purchase a Zynga Game Card or two during this promotional period? Which game will you redeem it in, and which items are you hoping to win when you do? Let us know in the comments!
To be specific, each game has its own set of items, some of which are exclusive to this GameStop promotion. If you purchase a $10 Game Card, you're guaranteed to receive just a single Mystery Good, although which item on the list you'll receive looks to truly be a mystery. For $25, your prize goes up to three Mystery Goods, while the top dollar amount - $50 - grants you six prizes. Keep in mind, you'll also receive the appropriate amount of premium currency for the particular game you've redeemed the card in.
Here's a complete look at the items that are available (notice that some are re-releases, or are least far less valuable than others - Cafe World spice, I'm looking at you).
Interestingly, Adventure World isn't found in this promotion, but that's likely due to its still young age. You'll only have until November 6 to take advantage of this offer, but in that time you can purchase as many cards (or as few) as you'd like. Perhaps we'll see Adventure World items added in that time frame, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that possibility just to be safe. For more information, check out the promotion's website.
UPDATE: We've spoken with Zynga, which confirms that Adventure World players won't be left out in the cold. If you're a PowerUp Rewards member (GameStop's rewards program), you'll receive an additional code for a starter pack in Adventure World or the upcoming Mafia Wars 2.
Will you purchase a Zynga Game Card or two during this promotional period? Which game will you redeem it in, and which items are you hoping to win when you do? Let us know in the comments!
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